Ey up.

It’s been one of those winters for Yorkshire. We like a dollop of drama here in the broad acres, and we’ve been dolloping on our own doorstep ever since Darren Lehmann batted us to championship safety in his farewell innings last September. It wasn’t long before Michael Lumb was following him out the door, taking his three good innings a season all the way down the M1 to Shane Warne’s Invitational XI.

Players wanting away from Headingly is nowt new. It’s happened so often in the last few years you’d be forgiven for thinking there was some kind of voodoo pied piper on the staff working his magic in reverse. But even though we knew Mags was unhappy, it was still a shock when he announced he wanted to leave. It wasn’t so much the desire to jump ship that took your breath away, as the rumour he could sign for Lancashire. I mean, can you imagine it? How could things have become so bad you’d rather spend seven months of the year in the company of Dominic Cork?

From then on, events descended into farce, as Yorkshire pushed staff aside to create a vacancy large enough to accommodate Chris Adams’ ego. Only for him to prove at the last minute that he possessed the kind of indecisiveness and unreliability that should preclude him from the positions of responsibility he mistakenly believes to be within his capabilities. It was a blow that left the club ruing several wasted months of planning and without a captain, coach and leading middle-order batsman at a time when the most obvious candidates to fill such positions were unavailable.

What made it all the more galling was he’d already been paraded in front of the press, making it sound like his mother had suckled him from birth on liquefied Yorkshire pudding for the express purpose of wearing the White Rose. His sense of timing was immaculate as well, changing his mind the day after meeting up with players and staff to lay out his plans for the future.

I sat quietly at the back during that meeting. It wasn’t my kind of thing: all mobile phones, writing on white boards and “I’m a straightforward kind of guy”. It felt like we were being sold double-glazing – that’s plastic and surrounds you with hot air, too. By the time he got round to “building on our one day successes” you began to wonder just how much research he’d put into the job. So when we heard next day he wasn’t coming, I reacted as much with relief as surprise. Perhaps whatever persuaded him “the role was too much at this stage of my career” did us all a favour, as Sussex kept their captain and Yorkshire gained a pantomime villain?

By now, we were in a full-blown crisis management mode. With the club giving the impression, less of a Swan gliding serenely past whilst it’s legs worked fanatically underneath, and more like a duck with its arse in the air and head under water. But sometimes impressions can be misleading and a crisis becomes a blessing in disguise, by clearing the decks and revealing hidden resolve. So it was to prove for Yorkshire, as the committee spent the months leading up to the new season pulling a succession of rabbits out of the hat. A minor miracle considering Yorkshire’s record of man management in years gone by has made Uday Hussein look like Mary Poppins.

The first signs of recovery came in late January when the elegant South African batsman Jacques Rudolph was threaded through the eye of a loophole in the Kolpack agreement. If the signing itself didn’t wake Lord Hawke from the dead, then he must have been by the deafening, and in many cases hypocritical, cries of foul emanating from various other counties and the PCA – the actions of three of whose members precipitated Yorkshire having to make the signing in the first place.

As a traditionalist I wasn’t overly impressed with us taking this particular path – I’d rather have seen Jacques come over as an overseas pro – but I could at least come down from my high horse long enough to understand the set of circumstances that forced Yorkshire’s hand. Others however, were enjoying themselves far too much in the saddle to remember players in their own ranks qualified to play on the basis of a Grandmothers passport, a shopping trip to Dublin or having once slept with an Estonian hooker in Dubai. For that alone, I hope the lad shoves a hat full of runs down their throat.

Better still was the luring back of Darren Gough as captain, three years after leaving for Essex. It was a move every bit as debated amongst Yorkshire supporters, some of whom have long memories for perceived misdemeanours of the past. We’ve still got some crusty old buggers out there bitterly complaining that ‘George Hirst hasn’t bowled many overs into the wind since he died’.

Personally I think it’s a bit of a gamble on a popular and talented player, but one with more experience of the physio’s room than captaincy. But his enthusiasm will inspire the youngsters in the team, he’s still a canny bowler and if we make sure he’s got the dressing room peg closest to the mirror, he should be as happy as Larry.

Within a week he’d been joined by another Barnsley boy returning home, Martyn Moxon. A lot of time and effort had been put into finding a new first team coach and I think we were all glad the search ended at a good Yorkshire lad with a track record at Durham of bringing on young local talent.

The good news continued to snowball with the promotion of Ian Dews who has done a wonderful job running the academy. With the final piece of the puzzle fitting into place when Mags returned to the fold after realising that under the new Gough/Moxon regime written permission would no longer be required before using the toilet.

So now we’re a week away from the first game and looking forward to the season with more optimism than you thought possible in the depths of winter. The players are fit and raring to go after successful pre-season training in Spain – even if rain made the greens run a little fast – and the Surrey game can’t come soon enough.

Si’thee later,

Len